The central storage of Sergnano it was found to be among the worst in Lombardy for atmospheric emissions of methane gas, a ‘silent enemy’ which significantly contributes to global warming and which when released into the atmosphere produces an even more powerful effect than CO2.
The complaint emerged from the analysis of the data collected during the monitoring campaign “It smells like gas. For the future of the planet, don’t hold your nose.” put in place by Legambiente with the support of Clean Air Task Force (CATF)which brought to light numerous critical issues especially regarding the state of maintenance of the infrastructure.
This is the result of the surveys which monitored methane losses along the entire fossil gas supply chain, detecting numerous and important structural losses which occur for example in extraction wells, refineries, gas pipelines, compression stations and in storage centers and regasification plants.
The Sergnano storage plant (the manager is Stogit) turned out to be the one with the most problems as it has 15 emission points, of which 10 leaks from infrastructural components (such as bolts, valves, joints, connectors, etc… ) as well as 5 points of ‘venting’, i.e. direct loss into the atmosphere. Furthermore, Legambiente also reported a non-lit flaring (i.e. a gas vent that should always have a flame to burn excess gas) which continuously emitted a cloud of methane.
A situation therefore among the most critical in Lombardy, where in May in eight days of monitoring on public land, 19 plants near Cremona and Lodi were monitored (thanks to the thermal imaging camera for optical gas detection “FLIR GF320”), of which as many as 14 presented significant emissions.
In total, on national soil, the Legambiente project monitored 45 plants between Abruzzo, Lombardy and Piedmont, detecting in 75.5% of cases situations of methane gas emissions which, according to what the association reports, are often linked to low or poor maintenance. The consequence of this is certainly the dispersion of large quantities of methane gas into the atmosphere, which has a climate-altering effect when emitted into the atmosphere, becoming one of the main causes of global warming.
Alarming data, according to Legambiente “destined to increase with the new gas infrastructures authorized and built by the Meloni Government and which are not in line with the information that companies in the gas transport sector declared to ARERA in 2022, amounting to just 53 leaks along approximately 12 thousand km of network inspected“.
For this reason Legambiente has launched a series of proposals to achieve the regulation of emissions and their reduction by at least 65% by 2030, also following virtuous examples of other nations such as Norway, for example, also asking for greater transparency from managers and providing sanctions for polluting practices such as venting and flaring
